Looking for Graiper family

Looking for the family of Stanley and Rosalia Grapier from Opole. Their son Joe Graiper fought in WWI and recently his dogtags were found in France and the persons who found them would like to return them to any family that may still exist in Poland. Please see:

findagraveforums.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2111169#Post21 11169

You can contact Ron.

Dotherightthing

That is so sad but so sweet of someone to take the effort to help family like this.

Let me see what I can find. familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/MJ7Z-ZDG

Idk if this is the same family. A Stanley Grapier born in Poland, child Joseph Grapier. Cook County, Chicago residence at the time. You need an ancestry.com membership to see the image, which might be worth it, but I don't have one. There are siblings listed. The wife's name doesn't match but transcripting to digital searching can be incorrect sometimes.

The dates don't match up on this one, but like I said, transcripting records to digital format, sometimes mistakes are made.

I'm going to keep searching for this as well because it's an interesting case, for sure.

Has the Polish consulate been asked about possibly helping with this? You never know unless you ask. I could ask, if you like, since I deal with some of their staff occasionally.

Do you have any way of finding out his birthdate?

Personally, I don't think his name was Graiper. It just doesn't fit. I can't find names like that anywhere from where I'm looking. Graiper, Griaper, Grapier, Greipr, etc. I'm thinking it's an abbreviation.

abmc.gov/search/detailw.php

I found this but it's not really helpful.

archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/summer/gold-star-mothers-2.html

This link gives two places to check national archives for WWI soldier records. You have to fill out a form and list the information you have.

If the name is not "Graiper", as the dog tag doesn't match the tombstone 100%, it could be a different version.

For example, Graiber from Russia (Polish ethnicity), a woman, but could be related

There are 17 Ellis Island records for Greiper last name, mostly from Klumacz, Poland and Jewish. The only thing I can get about that is perhaps it's related to Targowice, in Lower Silesia.

I will keep looking and check with some other sources I might have.

GRAJPER: There are a couple hundred people named Grajper living in the Lublin area of eastern Poland but whether this is the same family is hard to say. Anyway, Grajper is the way Poles would spell Graiper. The name is obviously of German or YIddish origin, perhaps an adaptation of the German wrod Gräber (digger).

The original poster inquires about this subject on the "Find a grave forums".


Hmm, let us run with the following hypotheses:
1. His original name was actually Gräper. The a-umlaut Ä is often represented by AE. So the alternative spelling would be Graeper. Nowhere in OP messages the soldier's nationality is mentioned. He could be equally well Polish, German or Silesian.

2. How does Graeper sound in German? To my untrained ear it sounds close enough to Polish "griepa" or English "graipa". I checked it via translate.google.com and ivona.com .

3. What if the American newspapers misprinted: "Oppeln, Prussia" or "Opole, Prussia" into "Opale, Russia"? Apparently Opole is spelled Uopole in Silesian.

4. Graeper (Gräper) is quite a popular German name - 770,000 google results
5. There are 3,500 google results for Graeper Oppeln
6. There are 1,700 google results for Graeper Opole
7. A list of killed during WWI, polegli.tgcp.pl/polegli.php?lng=en&id=G&order=mp&sort=d, contains one record with the same last name: Oskar Graeper, Mikołajki, Warmian-Masurian Voivodship

The same game could be played with u-umlaut, Grueper. Its German pronunciation could also lead to confusion. I hear here a sound like a Polish "gripa". But Grueper looses to Graeper statistically: there are only 3,500 google results vs. 770,000 for the former.

Does it make any sense to you?

==========
German graeper => English graper:
In the fifteenth century, the roughened or studded gripe of the lance.
n. The ring or hollow cylinder of iron through which the shaft of a lance passes and by which it is seized.

There is also opole lubelskie which would have been in Russia at the time and may fit in with the Lublin grajpers. It's a town of about 9000 people

Thank you all for your help. I will send Ron this information over at Find a Grave. Maybe he can make sense out of what I can't.

A new wrinkle: The 1/27/1920 edition of the Ironwood (MI) Daily Globe carries a small story about certificates to be awarded to the next-of-kin of local soldiers who died in war. Among them was Nicholas Grapier. (This is the surname spelling the newspaper uses.)

I presume Nicholas to be Joe's brother. A 1919 story in the local paper noted that Joe had been killed and the military had notified his unnamed brother (presumably local) because "his father Stanley Grapier is living in Opale, Russia."

So brother Nicholas might have his own family tree where we'll find modern-day relatives.

Hi, my surname is Grajper, I live near Lublin in Poland